 |
| Life's symmetry, reflected in Bedni Kund |
Trishul peeks fleetingly behind scudding cloud and the earth is white. I can hear melt- trickles from beneath the snow. Here, at its source, the Bedni Ganga trickles from under an overhang of ice. The upper reaches of this river are clear, rich in oxygen but poor in nutrients. Yet its narrow bed and fast-flowing waters possess considerable erosive abilities – both by chemical weathering of the rocks over which they pass and by the abrasive action of rock particles.
 |
| Nanda Ghunti peeks through a veil of mist |
Last night’s hail and snow has buried all irrelevant detail. The bright yellow flowers of a cluster of Marsh Marigold – of the Buttercup family – spring silently by the brook, nestling against a boulder. Such flimsy things they seem, just a step up from the leaves, with no heft. Yet last night’s blast of cold wind has neither withered nor shrivelled it. Frost failed to kill its basal, toothed, shining blades. It sits an easy prey to hail, storm and blizzard, a miracle of growth. What strength in fragility! Some mountain species resist becoming frozen solid because of the sluggish liquid moving in their cells acting like antifreeze. The fragrant, lavender-coloured flowers of Primula atrodentata lift their compact globular head from their icy bed. The whole flower vibrates with the attention it’s getting. The true miracle in the mountains is the manner in which every vestige of decay is seized upon by the roots of plants.
 |
| Marsh marigolds are a burst of vibrant colour against the bleakness of the landscape |
The Bedni springs from hidden aquifers under the earth. It will serve us during our brief stay here. I gargle and spit and wash and pollute this spring at its source. I hurry down to the ‘kitchen,’ with visions of hot porridge. Devidutt is warming himself in a blazing fire. There is an unusual amount of light streaming through. I look up – more rafters are missing… I take our entire ration of dalia, cook it with some vermicelli, milk and sugar – the result, a whole load of very appetizing nourishingly sweet porridge. The men arrive and devour the breakfast with great relish. They let us know, much later of course, that they had already swallowed the morning’s quota of energy bars! Sunita and I sit outside, hands cupped around our comfort food, and decide that as wonderful as this is, we are too old to trek with the cooking left to us. Devidutt is a guide with no training, content to lie back like some Old World nawab, one knee cocked, a cigarette (Sunita’s preferably) dangling from his thin lips. His small and subtle artifices to absent himself from volunteering a service exasperated Bijoy. The pony-owners are always ahead of us in one-third or one-fourth the time we take to arrive camp. With a fee I’m sure they could’ve been entrusted to make tea, cook us some breakfast and a meal at the end of the day.
We turn to look upon the mountain peaks of Trishul and Nanda Ghunti. Thick, irregular and scattered clouds float past the peaks, between us and the sun. The thinner edges of the clouds, more efficient at scattering light forward toward our eyes, shine brightly giving them a silver lining. For this moment of pure magnificence, all is worth it – our hunger, pain, suffering, fatigue, our insecurities and anxieties – all fall away. It is true that the wilderness can revitalize. We fill ourselves with wonder and awaken the genius in us that can infer the vanished past from a hint of rock.
‘Let’s go birding’, we say, with energy anew.